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black banding, ink or profile issue?
Hi all,
Wasnt sure where to post this as im not sure what the problem comes down to but its predominantly a colour issue so here goes…
Ok I know we all get the dredded banding problem and from what i see here its always down to a few factors like profiles, media, temps etc.
Ive got this B/W image that needs printing to canvas. So in Versaworks theres a nice setting for Density control only and we all know what thats going to do. So today ive tried about 4 times and wasted about 2 metres of expensive canvas because im getting the most horrid banding! Its not the type of banding thats uniform and would suggest that im cutting corners and printing at low quality, rather its banding at about 1inch apart and non-uniform. Its as if the machine is printing 2 different blacks.
The file is saved as Greyscale with a 15% dot gain as default in photoshop. Ive tried several profiles in VW including Sign&Display, Density U.S. and i even saved the file (a copy of it) in CMYK & RGB and tried the Density control via those profiles but still i get this banding.
Ive also made up a 10×10" pure black square and used Density control on that so that the machine would print from the black cart only (hopefully) and still i got the banding.
I only did a black and white image last week on this Density control setting and it was fine, no banding at all. Machine test prints before and after the print are 100% firing for black, in fact theyre perfect, not one one nozzle is misfiring or glogged and when i do test prints i never see a problem with the black head, except when it prints an image!
Im assuming that the Density control with a Greyscale file is only printing black yes? no others of the CMY are in there are they? The reason i ask is because im having problems with the magenta. My yellow is brand new Roland ink but the mag/cyan/black are still 3rd party.
My VW settings are set to Glossy white monomeric calendered vinyl (as instruceted for canvas), Highest quality print setting 1080×1080 and Density control selected in colour management.
Any ideas guys? Ive tried to take some pics but its almost impossible to capture black banding as theres flash glare and even outside the workshop in daylight with the flash off i still get glare because of the nature of the canvas coating.
Cheers for any suggestions
Dave.p.s. next on my list is to try some feed calibrations. Also the canvas has been in the print room for hours now and should be fully climatised to the room so that i could eliminate temperature problems.
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5 Replies
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Might be a long shot but….
Versaworks downloaded an update today. As usual I went online to see what’s new. They mentioned an error which causes a line to appear when printing bitmaps that do not have even pixel counts e.g. 300 x 500.Peter
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Have you tried printing on vinyl the same image profile etc?
From my experience when I’ve had this occur it was down to a few things:
* Temperature set too high or too low. The black ink is apparently denser then the other inks.
* The roll was damaged. This occurred only in a portion of the roll where the canvas was newer.
* Vacuum settings, there was a difference in distance between the canvas and the print head over the length of the canvas.Hope that helps. I seriously cringe when I have to print with a lot of black.
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bidirectional v unidirectional will give different results.
I get banding in bidirectional but not much in unidirectional, printing to canvas with black.
May be worth a try
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quote Shane Drew:bidirectional v unidirectional will give different results.I get banding in bidirectional but not much in unidirectional, printing to canvas with black.
May be worth a try
Yup, tried all the usual tricks and settings, still no joy – really bad banding, then another try would work….until the end of the print! Argggg.
I had to scrap the job in the end and told the customer that whoever took the photo wanted shooting 🙂
In fairness, the image was 80% black but the actual people in the centre of the image were so over exposed with white that i blamed it on that. It did seem that the banding was in places where the image was changing from black to white. Its as if there wasnt enough black being printed after a white part of the image.
I used the Density Control setting in Versaworks and about 5 other different ways to save the file (trial and error tests) and still the banding was there. i wouldnt mind if it was consistent every time and in the same place as i could at least try and repair that area in photoshop but unfortunately the banding was in-consistent every time – which makes it even more of a nightmare.
Its the ONLY image thats beaten me. No matter what, Ive always won in th end but this time the problem was really wasting canvas and ink to the point where it was non-profitable because of the amount of bad prints Id done. 🙁 bah!
Anyway, she understood and then asked me to do a shed full more of other canvases 🙂 yay 🙂 lol
cheers tho for your inputs 😉
Dave -
Over the last year, we have only used bi-directional in about 5% of our prints
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